A rumor has surfaced in the past couple of days that has actor Benedict Cumberbatch potentially playing a role in the new Star Wars trilogy. As Cumberbatch recently played a major villain in Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness, the idea of him playing a primary villain in the new Star Wars trilogy has me more excited than ever for the next three films. The rumor is that he’ll play a Sith villain in all three of the films in the trilogy, making him the new trilogy’s Darth Vader of sorts. If this keeps up, the Sherlock actor will have played a pretty major villain in some of the largest movies in history. This casting, if it pans out, is absolutely a brilliant maneuver, and should happen.

Benedict Cumberbatch could add this role to a list that includes the dragon Smaug from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The rumor is that he had to drop out of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak for this role. It hasn’t been announced yet, however, and could turn out to be as much of a rumor as anything. If this pans out… whoa… somehow they’re making moves on these films that are both shockingly cool and giving us a lot of hope that we’ll finally get a Star Wars film that brings the fandom back to where I have remained since I got in to the saga in the mid-90s. Please be true.

This is something that I never thought would happen. When the Star Wars prequels came to an end, it was pretty common knowledge then, that George Lucas was done with Star Wars films. Back in high school, I would talk with friends about how there would eventually be nine films. Now it’s happening, and there is more planned after that.

There has been a lot announced since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm was announced on October 30, 2012. Nothing specific about the stories yet, but I’ll write more about what the stories mean for the expanded universe in another entry in this series.